CORK LIKE YOU´VE NEVER SEEN IT BEFORE!

What happens when you explore cork through generative digital processes? What happens when you bring together technology, innovation and sustainability? What happens when young creative talent comes together in perfect harmony in an industry with over 50 years of existence? What happens when a brand decides to create locally and think globally? What happens when a product unites form, function and aesthetics?

Gencork has dared to articulate multiple elements, techniques, processes, people, strategies, feelings and dreams, all with a single purpose: to create a unique, innovative, disruptive product, with thermal and acoustic properties while simultaneously… beautiful.  More than a product, an experience. See and feel it.

GENCORK is a brand of cork covering solutions that explores the symbiosis between a low-tech material and high-tech processes. The 100% natural and sustainable expanded cork agglomerate is transformed through generative design algorithms and advanced digital fabrication processes, expressing a new formal aesthetics. This creative and disruptive system not only optimizes cork’s thermal and acoustic properties, but also adds artistic value to traditional walls.

SOFALCA . MANUFACTURER

Having established a market presence over years of professional activity, and always using cork as a raw material for creating its products, Sofalca works daily to develop new innovation processes for its business area. When testing our products, there’s always one thing that we keep in mind: to provide natural and ecological market solutions. Sofalca’s productive process is both sustainable and energetically self-sufficient in 95% of its needs when using its own biomass. Apart from being a business, we define sustainability, we care for the environment and about providing solutions for our clients’ lives and those of future generations by marketing a highly sustainable product. Sofalca complies with all the environmental standards and is even a certified business in terms of cork recycling. Sofalca’s objective since the beginning of its existence as a productive enterprise has been to expand its business in different areas. We want to be the best and to innovate constantly. We are ready to accept the challenges set by architects, engineers, designers, builders and business owners.

DIGITALAB . CREATIVE DIRECTION

Digitalab is an architectural office, design studio and creative lab, focused on both generative design and digital fabrication. It is a young, multidisciplinar practice led by Ana Fonseca and Brimet Silva, that develops projects in several fields: product design, art installation, interior design, architecture and digital research.  Digitalab are committed to employing new technologies in the production of forms and spaces, exploring strategic combinations between generative processes (Computational design) and digital fabrication technologies (3D printing, CNC, laser-cutting and robotics). Their goal is to explore the potential of digital tools as creative weapons to transform pixels into atoms, and virtual processes into physical objects and environments.

CORK . 100% NATURAL

It is only used cork of the branches (falca) for the manufacture of cork granules. These are block clusters in an autoclave, a process that is 100% natural, without the use of additives. This technology, developed by Sofalca, consists of injecting water vapour through pellets that will expand and agglomerate with the resin of the cork itself. This “cooking” also gives the resulting cork a dark color, like chocolate. During production of the steam, biomass is used, which is obtained in milling and cleaning the falca, and that’s what makes it a truly ecological production and without waste, with a 95% energy self-sufficiency. This super-material, cork, offers a huge range of advantages, because in addition to being an excellent thermal and acoustic insulator and as well as antivibration, it’s also a CO2 sink, playing a key role in the environment.

GENERATIVE DESIGN . DIGITAL PROCESS

The digital process is one of most important elements of GENCORK´s DNA. Adopting computational design strategies, the brand explores algorithmic scripts inspired by nature, as well as mathematics, geometry, and biomimetics, through parametric systems. With this process, it’s now possible to produce a huge range of different variations of a pattern, adapting it to any size or form.

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